Introduction to Tamil History

1. Languages families prevalent in India

The inseparable words, the word structure, the usage of words in different languages are compared to designate the family the language belongs to. Linguists have divided the world languages into 9 language families. Let's see about the language families prevalent in India.
Indian language families are of four types.
a. Austric
b. Dravidian
c. Sino-Tibetan
d. Indo-European

a. Austric Language Family
The central regions of India, Assam, Nagaland and Myanmar, Malay are the regions where these languages are spoken. This language is spoken mainly by hill living people. It's believed by some experts that these languages must have been spoken all over India in the remote past. Some of the languages of this family are as follows.
Santali: Hills of Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal are the regions where this language is spoken. Among the tribal languages this is the one spoken by maximum number of people.
Mundari: This language is spoken in regions around Ranchi in south Bihar. Mundari along with Santhali are said to belong to the Munda language.
Kasi: It is spoken in Assam

b. Dravidian Language Family
'A Grammar of Teloogoo Language" written in 1816 A.D. contains an introduction written by Francis W. Ellis in which he claims that the languages Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam belong to a separate language. In 1819 Raasc suggested that the foreign words present in Sanskrit language could be separated and he termed them as malabar (dravidian) words. The existence of this language family was supported by Stevenson in 1844 A.D.
In 1856 Dr. Caldwell who researched these languages gave the term 'Dravidian' to this family. Today there are 22 languages that have been identified as belonging to this family. Based on the regions of speech, they are divided into South, Central, North Dravidian Languages.
South Dravidian Languages.
b.1. South Dravidian Languages
The languages spoken in southern Indian like Tamil, Malayalam, Kodagu, Tulu, Toda, Kannada etc are the languages of this sub-group. Among these languages Irula, Paniya, Kaattu languages are believed to be dialects of other languages.
b.2. Central Dravidian Languages
Telugu, Gondi, Gonda, Pengo, Manda, Kuvi, Kolami, Naiki, Gadaba etc are the languages of this group. The regions are Andhra, East Karnataka, South Orissa.
b.3. North Dravidian Languages
Malto, Kurukh, Brahui are the languages spoken in the regions of Northern India and Pakistan. Brahui is spoken in the regions of Baluchistan.
It is believed by some experts that the dravidian languages separated from Tamil. Others believe that a common proto-dravidian language is the source of all dravidian languages.
Among all the dravidian languages, Tamil is the only language considered as Classical by linguists.